Author Topic: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?  (Read 3813 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline mystery-ak

  • Owner
  • Administrator
  • ******
  • Posts: 381,863
  • Gender: Female
  • Let's Go Brandon!
The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« on: August 03, 2020, 02:33:40 pm »
August 3, 2020
The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
By Dale A. Fitzgibbons

It is August, 2020, now seventy-five years since the end of America's World War II hostilities with the nation then known as the Empire of Japan.  August 6 and 9 are the historic anniversary dates of the first and only use of nuclear weapons in warfare.  In the ensuing three quarters of a century, the attacks of 1945 on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — their usefulness and their rectitude —  have been the subject of vigorous debate over their military, scientific, political, historic, and moral significance.

Schools of thought regarding yes-or-no justification generally break down as follows:

Yes.  The European and Pacific wars were already too costly in lives and property.  A quick end was mandatory.

No.  The European war was already over, and the Pacific conflict was winding down.  The Soviet Union, free from battling Germany, was soon to engage in hostile action against Japan.

Yes.  There were no good options.  This was the least bad alternative.

more
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/08/the_atomic_attacks_on_japan_justified_or_not.html
Proud Supporter of Tunnel to Towers
Support the USO
Democrat Party...the Party of Infanticide

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
-Matthew 6:34

Offline catfish1957

  • Laken Riley.... Say her Name. And to every past and future democrat voter- Her blood is on your hands too!!!
  • Political Researcher
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,365
  • Gender: Male
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #1 on: August 03, 2020, 02:53:24 pm »
I know it is a widely speculative number, but I have heard numbers like 50K-250K allied deaths had there been an invasion, and at least 2 to 3X that of Japanese. 

So, I go on the side of justified. 
I display the Confederate Battle Flag in honor of my great great great grandfathers who spilled blood at Wilson's Creek and Shiloh.  5 others served in the WBTS with honor too.

Offline Cyber Liberty

  • Coffee! Donuts! Kittens!
  • Administrator
  • ******
  • Posts: 79,873
  • Gender: Male
  • 🌵🌵🌵
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #2 on: August 03, 2020, 03:07:38 pm »
I'm biased.  I'd never have been born in the first place, Dad was in the Pacific Theater and would have been one of the first casualties, no matter how many the bean-counters say would have been.
For unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death — if you’re unvaccinated — for themselves, their families, and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm. Sloe Joe Biteme 12/16
I will NOT comply.
 
Castillo del Cyber Autonomous Zone ~~~~~>                          :dontfeed:

Offline Bigun

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 51,331
  • Gender: Male
  • Resistance to Tyrants is Obedience to God
    • The FairTax Plan
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #3 on: August 03, 2020, 03:13:26 pm »
I'm biased.  I'd never have been born in the first place, Dad was in the Pacific Theater and would have been one of the first casualties, no matter how many the bean-counters say would have been.

Same here.  Hell yes it was justified and necessary!
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
- J. R. R. Tolkien

Offline Cyber Liberty

  • Coffee! Donuts! Kittens!
  • Administrator
  • ******
  • Posts: 79,873
  • Gender: Male
  • 🌵🌵🌵
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #4 on: August 03, 2020, 03:31:03 pm »
Same here.  Hell yes it was justified and necessary!

Truman knew that if the public ever found out he had a weapon that could end it all, but didn't use it because he wanted to spare Japanese lives, he'd have been Impeached the day word got out.  This was before "Impeachment Mania."
For unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death — if you’re unvaccinated — for themselves, their families, and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm. Sloe Joe Biteme 12/16
I will NOT comply.
 
Castillo del Cyber Autonomous Zone ~~~~~>                          :dontfeed:

Offline skeeter

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 26,717
  • Gender: Male
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #5 on: August 03, 2020, 03:42:59 pm »
I know it is a widely speculative number, but I have heard numbers like 50K-250K allied deaths had there been an invasion, and at least 2 to 3X that of Japanese. 

So, I go on the side of justified.

An invasion of Japan would've been the Okinawa campaign x 100, and US moral was being stretched taut on Okinawa. We could've done it, but it would've been horrific even by Pacific war standards.

Its interesting to note the war was dragging on so long and the casualties were so high that there was even beginning to be political pressure at home to find some way, any way to end hostilities.


Offline cato potatoe

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3,884
  • Gender: Male
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #6 on: August 03, 2020, 03:57:28 pm »
The USSR was about to invade.  Japan should be grateful the war ended soon and left them with a unified country. 

Offline skeeter

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 26,717
  • Gender: Male
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #7 on: August 03, 2020, 04:07:57 pm »
The USSR was about to invade.  Japan should be grateful the war ended soon and left them with a unified country.

And after Hiroshima they did, rolling over the already defeated Kwangtung Army in Manchuria.

For that Uncle Joe wanted Hokkaido. Thank goodness FDR was already dead, they would've gotten it.

Offline Bigun

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 51,331
  • Gender: Male
  • Resistance to Tyrants is Obedience to God
    • The FairTax Plan
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #8 on: August 03, 2020, 04:09:29 pm »
And after Hiroshima they did, rolling over the already defeated Kwangtung Army in Manchuria.

For that Uncle Joe wanted Hokkaido. Thank goodness FDR was already dead, they would've gotten it.

 :amen:
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
- J. R. R. Tolkien

Offline Fishrrman

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 35,365
  • Gender: Male
  • Dumbest member of the forum
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #9 on: August 03, 2020, 10:46:01 pm »
"The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?"

Yes.
Of course they were.


Do you have any another questions...?

Aside:
We should have KEPT ON USING atomic bombs on North Korea and China to stop Mao's Korean war. It was never really under control of Kim il Sung. Mao was the driving force from its beginning until he ordered it to be brought to an end after Stalin died.

Offline Hoodat

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 35,827
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #10 on: August 03, 2020, 10:53:13 pm »
For that Uncle Joe wanted Hokkaido. Thank goodness FDR was already dead, they would've gotten it.

You got that right.  They would have also gotten Austria, Greece, and Finland.
If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.

-Dwight Eisenhower-


"The [U.S.] Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals ... it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government ... it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection against the government."

-Ayn Rand-

Offline EdinVA

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 8,584
  • Gender: Male
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #11 on: August 04, 2020, 01:35:37 am »
And why does this question keep coming up?  Retribution $$.....

Offline DB

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 13,085
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #12 on: August 04, 2020, 02:38:11 am »
It is a whole lot easier to question whether some previous generation's lives were worth losing to defeat the Japanese without the bomb. It is something else all together when it is your life or your families lives on the line....

As far as I'm concerned the Japanese earned it. They were absolutely brutal to everyone they attacked and enslaved. They were the aggressor.

Offline DCPatriot

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 45,802
  • Gender: Male
  • "...and the winning number is...not yours!
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #13 on: August 04, 2020, 03:17:15 am »
UFO activity involving our military increased dramatically after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Foo fighters in Vietnam.  Actually engaging in 'battle'.  They don't want humans to have ultimate control over them.  Thus, they're display of shutting down and/or powering up the silos...to show us they can squash us like bugs.

So, in the eyes of Subterranean Intelligence, (they're been here on earth longer than we have) no they were not justified.
"It aint what you don't know that kills you.  It's what you know that aint so!" ...Theodore Sturgeon

"Journalism is about covering the news.  With a pillow.  Until it stops moving."    - David Burge (Iowahawk)

"It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living" F. Scott Fitzgerald

Offline Absalom

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4,375
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #14 on: August 04, 2020, 03:59:06 am »
Japan initiated the war at Pearl Harbor.
As war progressed, Japan became increasingly forced backward after
losing island after island, in addition to several Naval encounters.
After 4 years, Japan's military sensed defeat but refused to accept it;
believing surrender dishonorable.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were appropriate, inevitable and of their decision.
« Last Edit: August 04, 2020, 05:10:53 am by Absalom »

Online Smokin Joe

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 56,417
  • I was a "conspiracy theorist". Now I'm just right.
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #15 on: August 04, 2020, 07:55:06 am »
"The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?"

Yes.
Of course they were.


Do you have any another questions...?

Aside:
We should have KEPT ON USING atomic bombs on North Korea and China to stop Mao's Korean war. It was never really under control of Kim il Sung. Mao was the driving force from its beginning until he ordered it to be brought to an end after Stalin died.
IIRC, LeMay brought that up when the ChiComs were massing across the Yalu. Likely it would have saved my dad at least one of his Purple Hearts.

And on topic, yes, whatever means were necessary to end the war quickly. Likely millions of lives were saved by using them, and it was a level of force that could not be denied, god emperor or no.
« Last Edit: August 04, 2020, 07:56:23 am by Smokin Joe »
How God must weep at humans' folly! Stand fast! God knows what he is doing!
Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C S Lewis

Offline AL

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 230
  • Gender: Male
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #16 on: August 04, 2020, 08:51:42 am »
"The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?"

Yes.
Of course they were.


Do you have any another questions...?

Aside:
We should have KEPT ON USING atomic bombs on North Korea and China to stop Mao's Korean war. It was never really under control of Kim il Sung. Mao was the driving force from its beginning until he ordered it to be brought to an end after Stalin died.

Agree.  Once a US military person is killed in an act of war.  Its game on, get it over with by the quickest method available, including nukes.

Online Smokin Joe

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 56,417
  • I was a "conspiracy theorist". Now I'm just right.
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #17 on: August 04, 2020, 08:53:45 am »
Agree.  Once a US military person is killed in an act of war.  Its game on, get it over with by the quickest method available, including nukes.
"Shock and Awe" works.
How God must weep at humans' folly! Stand fast! God knows what he is doing!
Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C S Lewis

Offline cato potatoe

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3,884
  • Gender: Male
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #18 on: August 04, 2020, 01:20:07 pm »
And why does this question keep coming up?  Retribution $$.....

I can see the next dem president apologizing for it.  This generation doesn't know anything about the 1940s, other than it was raaaaaaycist.

Offline Slide Rule

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 14,337
  • Gender: Male
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #19 on: August 04, 2020, 01:25:03 pm »

Dropping the Ball on the Bomb by Alan J Levine

I subscribe to Chronicles a Magazine for American Culture. They have a similar article I read yesterday at lunch. I feel the article flawed and I found myself writing all over the magazine margins with corrections their editor should have made.

My scratching

George Marshall most respected? Really? Not by me.

Admiral Ernest King?  Another loser who left our east coast venerable to German U Boats. Roosevelt selected King because he looked tough.

Unconditional surrender? A concept gift from Joe Stalin so he could be there for the spoils.

Consideration of enemy deaths?  I am sure that high enemy combatants deaths were never a deterrent to our actions. American and Allies deaths were.

Dropping the bomb saved Truman. If the public would have discovered we had such weapons with development costs of over a billion, we would have been free of democrats for quite some time.

Mistake to drop the second bomb? We had only fissionable material for two bombs. Best to use them both at the start.

Claims that Eisenhower, LeMay, Arnold, Leahy and King opposed the bomb is conjecture. There are always claims of the dead supporting a writers view. It is a weak crutch.

George Marshall? Disregard anything Marshall and refer to the 50,000 word speech that Senator Joe McCarthy gave in the Senate. I have a copy of it.

We also dropped the bomb to deter Russia. What we didn't know was Stalin already had the secrets before Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Yes war is terrible. Using a new weapon and methods is always part of the equation and I am hopeful we have those new weapons at our fingertips and haven't fumbled them to foreign governments for kickbacks.
White, American, MAGA, 3% Neanderthal, and 97% Extreme Right Wing Conservative.

Recommended

J Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
E Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
N Davies, Europe: A History
R Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics
R Penrose, The Road To Reality & The Emperor's New Mind
K Popper, An Open Society and Its Enemies & The Logic of Scientific Discovery
A Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, & Everything he wrote

Offline Bigun

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 51,331
  • Gender: Male
  • Resistance to Tyrants is Obedience to God
    • The FairTax Plan
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #20 on: August 04, 2020, 01:58:58 pm »
Dropping the Ball on the Bomb by Alan J Levine

I subscribe to Chronicles a Magazine for American Culture. They have a similar article I read yesterday at lunch. I feel the article flawed and I found myself writing all over the magazine margins with corrections their editor should have made.

My scratching

George Marshall most respected? Really? Not by me.

Admiral Ernest King?  Another loser who left our east coast venerable to German U Boats. Roosevelt selected King because he looked tough.

Unconditional surrender? A concept gift from Joe Stalin so he could be there for the spoils.

Consideration of enemy deaths?  I am sure that high enemy combatants deaths were never a deterrent to our actions. American and Allies deaths were.

Dropping the bomb saved Truman. If the public would have discovered we had such weapons with development costs of over a billion, we would have been free of democrats for quite some time.

Mistake to drop the second bomb? We had only fissionable material for two bombs. Best to use them both at the start.

Claims that Eisenhower, LeMay, Arnold, Leahy and King opposed the bomb is conjecture. There are always claims of the dead supporting a writers view. It is a weak crutch.

George Marshall? Disregard anything Marshall and refer to the 50,000 word speech that Senator Joe McCarthy gave in the Senate. I have a copy of it.

We also dropped the bomb to deter Russia. What we didn't know was Stalin already had the secrets before Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Yes war is terrible. Using a new weapon and methods is always part of the equation and I am hopeful we have those new weapons at our fingertips and haven't fumbled them to foreign governments for kickbacks.

Looks like you and I are pretty much one the same page @Slide Rule and, as I'm quite sure you already know, Joesph McCarthy has been conclusively proven right about almost everything he said regarding Communist in our midst. Especially so in the Feral government bureaucracy.
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
- J. R. R. Tolkien

Offline Slide Rule

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 14,337
  • Gender: Male
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #21 on: August 04, 2020, 04:34:43 pm »
Looks like you and I are pretty much one the same page @Slide Rule and, as I'm quite sure you already know, Joseph McCarthy has been conclusively proven right about almost everything he said regarding Communist in our midst. Especially so in the Feral government bureaucracy.


Yep Gunner Joe was on target. Too bad an illness did him. I am sure he would have slayed all those around him. His 50,000 word Senate speech is all over Marshall. It made for a division with Eisenhower and as many know Eisenhower was the first Rino, otherwise Roosevelt would not have placed him in control of Europe.

I spoke with M Stanton Evans after he wrote Blacklisted By History at Hillsdale College years ago. He gave me nearly a day of his time answering every question I could think of. A great man and author.


I owe an apology to Chronicles after reading the remainder of the article. That I will do shortly.

Seems Chronicles largely agree with many of my points. There is a series of articles this month in Chronicles about the Bomb. After a multiple year lapse after cancelling National Review, Chronicles has replaced it. I have few disagreements with it, and recommend a subscription either paper or electronic. Being old, and liking to write in the margins correcting faulty thinking, I choose paper. I am still in the process of understanding their differences with the philosophy of Milton Friedman.



White, American, MAGA, 3% Neanderthal, and 97% Extreme Right Wing Conservative.

Recommended

J Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
E Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
N Davies, Europe: A History
R Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics
R Penrose, The Road To Reality & The Emperor's New Mind
K Popper, An Open Society and Its Enemies & The Logic of Scientific Discovery
A Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, & Everything he wrote

Offline Bigun

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 51,331
  • Gender: Male
  • Resistance to Tyrants is Obedience to God
    • The FairTax Plan
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #22 on: August 04, 2020, 04:43:06 pm »
Quote
I spoke with M Stanton Evans after he wrote Blacklisted By History at Hillsdale College years ago. He gave me nearly a day of his time answering every question I could think of. A great man and author.

That is fantastic @Slide Rule I would love to have been a party to that conversation.
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
- J. R. R. Tolkien

Offline Slide Rule

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 14,337
  • Gender: Male
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #23 on: August 04, 2020, 04:56:48 pm »
That is fantastic @Slide Rule I would love to have been a party to that conversation.



I would have loved to have had you there. It was exceptional. My friend Stan Marvin invited and paid for me to attend a Cold War Seminar which was a week long event. I can say it was the most interesting personal talk that I have ever had with a man of such historical intelligence. It is for me a very fond memory.

It started me focusing on not only history but politics. I was Conservative at the time, but now I like the term Extreme Right Wing Conservative. I embrace it.

Slide Rule
White, American, MAGA, 3% Neanderthal, and 97% Extreme Right Wing Conservative.

Recommended

J Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
E Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
N Davies, Europe: A History
R Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics
R Penrose, The Road To Reality & The Emperor's New Mind
K Popper, An Open Society and Its Enemies & The Logic of Scientific Discovery
A Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, & Everything he wrote

Offline Bigun

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 51,331
  • Gender: Male
  • Resistance to Tyrants is Obedience to God
    • The FairTax Plan
Re: The Atomic Attacks on Japan: Justified or Not?
« Reply #24 on: August 04, 2020, 04:57:47 pm »
My apology to Chronicles author Alan J Levine. That is what can happen when you respond after reading part of an article. Yes it is a rookie mistake.

Levine goes to our fascination of race and racism relating to the bomb. All these type arguements of applying what we know today should have affected those in the past to choose better options or at least options that an author predominately interested in race would have had them make. Those in the past made decisions based on events of their time. They didn't know that one of our political parties would do an about face with minorities and present themselves as supporting blacks while keeping them on the plantation. Many remain on the plantation and that accounts for their 90% voting support. This is common of the left in many of their positions. Apply today to the past and fault them for it.

It is one more thing that strives to place fear in the public's mind. Something we should atone for and pay reparations for. In short a political sound bite.

The article says "is it possible for our country to express profound sorrow over the atomic bombing in 1945. Without that way there is no possibility of finding a way to repudiate future use of nuclear weapons.." It turns out here is a direct way. Fear of our military power.

"The way in which many focus on the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as thought they were the sole Japanese civilians killed in the war, indicates  their real motives. Their pity is not directed at the Japanese, but at themselves, for the danger which they imagine the atomic bombings of 1945 expose them to."

"There is little to be said for the latter misuse of the issue for political ends."

Quite a close and I agree with the author.

Slide Rule

 :thumbsup:
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
- J. R. R. Tolkien